There are steps to every plan. You can't get to the final step without going through all the prior points on the list. Every piece of the mechanism has to come together and work in tandem to get the job done since one mistake could send the whole thing down the gutter. Perhaps one could fix a few mistakes, add some extra steps or side steps towards the end goal, but following the initial plan is always the easiest way. The fastest route from one point to another is a straight line, right?

Those were the thoughts racing through Izuku's mind at the moment, the light of the blue fire shining bright behind him.

He ran through a white-walled hallway as the ceiling collapsed around him and threatened to bury him alive. He passed door after door, but none of them were the door he was looking for. He had to find room 917 before the whole place crumbled to the ground.

Before it was too late.

But he was just passing room 986 and the hall seemed to just turn into more and more halls and he couldn't find the door he needed. He could hear screaming elsewhere in the building, the horrible sound only interrupted by the voices calling his name in his earpiece.

Male and female voices, both known and unfamiliar, were trying to get him to answer over the com, but he didn't know who to listen to in the chaos.

"I'm fine," He said breathlessly. "I can get there in time!"

But that was a lie. He knew that even as he pushed his legs to run faster. Room 972 flashed by his side and he knew he wasn't going to make it in time but he had to try. Maybe the structure would hold up long enough for him to reach.

Room 956.

He felt like he couldn't breathe but he pushed forward.

Room 935.

Part of the floor gave in but he jumped over the gap.

Room 921.

God, he was so close. He was almost there he coul-

The roof caved in, trapping him under tons of debris and constricting his chest.

"No," Izuku cried, not even able to reach the earpiece to call for help. "No!"

The constricting feeling in his chest got tighter and tighter and he wondered if he was dying for a second when suddenly he awoke with a start.

It took him a good minute to separate reality from his dream, but he was still shaking even after he recognized the small room around him. He hadn't had a nightmare in a good while and this one had felt horribly real, but at least now he knew where he was.

The crumbling hallway had been replaced by a wooden ceiling and a soft bed, the real things contrasting drastically from the setting of his dream. The one thing that had remained was the constricting force around his chest but the ruble had been exchanged for a sleeping Toga, her arms tight around him.

He'd left for his own room right around midnight after talking with Toga and he was sure that he'd locked the door behind him, and yet here she was in his bed. The only thing separating them was the fact that Izuku fell asleep on top of the covers while Toga was tucked in like a child with a teddy bear.

Izuku blushed like an idiot, trying really hard not to freak out so as to not wake the girl up. Izuku had yet to get used to this level of physical contact, and this was breaking all kinds of personal boundaries that he was definitely sure he wasn't ready to cross anytime soon.

He struggled to get out of her grasp, careful to not wake Toga up and sighing in relief when he was able to replace himself with a pillow. Toga hugged it tightly and Izuku hurried out of his own room as if he'd trespassed on private property.

Not knowing what else to do with himself, Izuku walked downstairs to the bar. The clock on the wall informed him that it was currently five in the morning, a good four and a half hours before the mission to rescue Stain would take place. There was no one else in the room, not even Kurogiri who seemed to constantly be behind the bar, and Izuku shivered involuntarily.

He wondered if Stain had been here when the League had recruited them months ago. That got him thinking about how injured his teacher must have been upon his capture and he knew he needed a distraction before he started spiraling. He started looking around the small place, finding some spare change between the couch cushions and a couple of books behind the counter. Next to the books was a black pen and, before he noticed, he was writing down his thoughts in some spare napkins.

At first, his words were jumbled. He had too many things on his mind and some sentences melted into others without any rhyme or reason, but it made him feel much better. It was hard to get stuck in his head when he had to focus on the words he was writing, so he kept it up for hours. He unfolded napkin after napkin, using the cheap material on both sides to make the most out of it.

Just past eight, Kurogiri made his entrance. He must have warped into the bar because he was suddenly looking over Izuku's shoulder and asking what he was writing about and Izuku felt his soul leave his body for a second.

He quickly gathered all the napkins in his arms, excused himself by saying he was writing down some personal things, and then ran upstairs towards his room while cursing himself.

"Personal things?!" He hissed at himself, getting back into his room and making a beeline for the bathroom. The last thing he needed was the League believing he had a journal (the fact that he did have a journal back when he was with Stain was not relevant, shut up) and he hastily threw all the paper in the toilet and flushed it.

He stared at the dissolving paper until it was gone and sighed. He needed a moment to himself before he lost his nerves.

He stepped out of the bathroom and face planted on the bed.

"Good morning," Toga said sleepily. Izuku responded with a grunt, having forgotten that the girl was even in his room in the first place.

"How did you get in here?" Izuku mumbled against the covers.

"I got the key from the bar, just like Dabi." She answered cheerily, pulling the covers up to her chin like she owned the place. Izuku was currently too uneasy to feel embarrassed so he just stayed face down on the bed in an attempt to clear his mind, trying real hard to ignore the presence in his room.

This in turn backfired and he spent the next forty-five minutes drowning in self-doubt and anxiety. The very thought that today's mission might not go according to plan was getting to him and he was suddenly filled with terror.

What if they didn't get Stain back? What if someone that wasn't meant to die died? What if they got arrested? Would they all end up in Tartarus? What if Shigaraki realized that something was off before they managed to get Stain back?

Anything could go wrong. And if anything did go wrong, Izuku wasn't sure he could live with himself. He felt just as bad as he did that first night he arrived at the bar: helpless and lost.

He'd be lying if he said he wasn't glad when there was a knock at the door, even when Toga answered 'coming!' before he had a chance to speak.

Toga was still stretching in bed when Izuku opened the door, and Shoto gave him an odd look. Dabi on the other hand just raised an eyebrow.

"What's that all about?" He asked, his monotone laced with the slightest hint of amusement.

Izuku rubbed his eyes as if he hadn't slept at all.

"She got my key. N-nothing happened." He added that last part defensively, an uncomfortable blush on his face. Dabi shrugged and Shoto nodded and neither of the brothers seemed to care about whether that was true or not, something that Izuku was half grateful for. He really needed to set some basic boundaries with Toga once they were out of here.

"We're almost ready to go." Dabi reminded him, and the tiredness in Izuku's mind seemed to dissipate in an instant. He caught a glimpse of Magne heading downstairs along with Mustard and his shoulders tensed.

"It's happening." Izuku murmured and Dabi nodded.

"Are you ready?"

"Yeah," Izuku told the burnt man, feeling how Toga came to stand beside him with his knives and sword in her hands.

"Let's do it."

Hotaru park was always filled with people no matter the time of day. From people walking dogs to families playing together, you could always count on at least a dozen people being there at any given moment.

Izuku and Spinner's investigation had led them to notice that the early morning was when the least people were there, since children were either asleep or in school, but the streets around the park were filled with cars from people going to work.

That was the perfect time.

So exactly at 9:34 in the morning of that Monday, the League made its move.

From opposite corners of the park, the two nomus that had been entrusted to Dabi stepped out of their individual portals and headed towards the street. They wrecked havoc as they went, ripping trees from the ground and turning over parked cars as they went their separate ways, each of them attracting a multitude of heroes.

The two monstrosities performed as they had been instructed by the leader of the mission, and they easily avoided heroes whilst destroying whatever they had in front of them that wasn't a person.

Shigaraki had wished for injured people, but the mindless creatures had been given another set of orders at the last moment, and they simply swatted the heroes around them like flies while avoiding the rest of the population.

At first, people ran in every direction without rhyme or reason, everyone trying to hide but finding no real place to do so as the roads got blocked by debris. Things got worse as even more portals opened up around the area, each dropping off a different member of the League. Unbeknownst to the general population, these particular members of the League had absolutely no intention of killing anyone that wasn't a pro hero.

They had to make up for the lack of casualties by destroying as much property as they could and the result was an instantaneous explosion of chaos and panic that no one was able to control for a good few minutes.

The hospital's first response was to barricade it's doors, but those were soon opened when a group of three ran for the door, a woman unconscious in her son's arms and all three people splashed with blood. Unable to reject the wounded, the hospital staff started shepherding people inside in an attempt to protect them from the living hell outside.

From the sea of blue flames and pinkish smoke, a crowd of people pushed each other to get to the safety of the government building, where heroes, cops and medical staff did their best to accommodate everyone seeking shelter.

People flooded the ER in hoards, most of them arriving with small cuts and bruises from colliding with their fellow men during the escape. Besides the three people covered in blood, who were rushed to a separate area for treatment, there was no one with anything beyond a scratch. Even still, people were screaming and crying and the staff was forced to scramble around to calm everyone down.

One of the many interns that was working at the time was assigned the three gravely injured people that had arrived first, and the scene that met her when she drew the curtains separating them from the rest of the room was nothing short of shocking.

The woman of the group had been set on the bed by her two companions, both of them looking shaken and just as bloody as her.

"What happened?" the doctor asked, already trying to move the woman's thick black hair away from her face to check for injuries. The mat of hair was stuck to the woman's fair skin with blood and the amount of red all over her was not calming.

"Our car got thrown out of the road." One of the boys cried, his shirt covered in blood. The other teen had half his face dripping with blood to the point where one of his eyes was closed.

"How are you related to her?" She asked, looking for a pulse and thankfully finding one.

"She's my mother," The black haired teen answered just as a second doctor made his way towards them. He immediately told the two teens to leave and he was forced to take them both away from the wounded woman.

Outside, things were even more chaotic.

Heroes were running left and right, a few trying to control the beasts destroying the city and the rest attempting to evacuate the buildings nearby. The League counted with multiple individuals with powerful quirks, but the one with the sleeping gas and the one with the blue fire were proving to be the most difficult to deal with. Not only that, but half the heroes that had arrived at the scene had progressively disappeared without trace and no one knew what was happening.

Were they being warped away? Were they dead?

No one knew what was happening, and backup from any hero even close to the top ten was at least ten minutes away.

Too long, in many heroes' opinion.

"On your left!" Someone called out, just as one of the monsters that had appeared first hit a fellow hero with such strength that the crunch of bones could be heard. Another hero got swallowed by a sea of flames and a third one vanished right where he stood. Amidst the chaos, no one heard the tiny crystal marble that clicked on the ground where he used to be.

Desperate to get the upper hand, a hero with a water quirk used his power to dissipate as much fire as he could. He caught a glimpse of a man with a black trenchcoat stepping over the charred remains of some other hero, and he felt something inside him snap.

"You bastards!" The hero screamed, nearing the killer but finding himself face to face with a masked villain.

"Ah, you heroes are so quick to call us names." The masked man said, the smile audible in his voice. The dark-haired villain behind him grinned and stepped away, hiding himself behind a wall of fire to continue causing mayhem.

Against all odds, this masked individual held his ground against the hero fighting him. No hit threw him off balance and he was able to jump from lamppost to lamppost with uncanny grace to avoid attacks.

With screams all around him, the hero clenched his fists. He was tired of this and he sent a desperate shot of water followed by another, all to try and hit the villain. He missed both times and roared in anger, a thing that made the villain laugh.

"Tired, are we?" The masked man asked cheerfully, bowing theatrically as he avoided yet another hit. The mockery only served to make the hero angrier, and he threw himself forward without hesitation.

"You heroes are so impulsive," The man whispered, surprisingly allowing the hero to get close to him. Just as the hero's water blade was about to make contact, the villain moved slightly and tapped the hero on the shoulder, effectively vanishing the other man. In the hero's place, a tiny blue marble landed in the villains hand and he pocketed it dramatically. The encounter was soon lost in the ocean of chaos and the same thing happened over and over with no hero catching up to what was actually happening.

The few people that hadn't succumbed to the gas had all managed to evacuate towards the hospital but there were so many that they had blocked the entrance to the ER. No one could get in or out, and heroes were forced to protect the hospital even more than before until backup arrived.

The few that arrived were soon dealt with by the League and before anyone realized, over fifteen heroes had been either killed or taken out of commission. There just didn't seem to be an end to the League and just when a few of the heroes present were losing hope, someone arrived.

Current hero number two, Hawks, fell from the heavens like an angel. He sent a rain of feathers down into the pink cloud of smoke and within moments, the kid responsible for the chemical attack was pinned to the ground with a red projectile digging out of his shoulder. The mist dissipated, revealing a multitude of heroes and civilians all unconscious on the street, the apprehended villain right in the middle of it all.

But the sense of victory lasted very little. The boy with the gas masked melted into the ground, a wide smile on his covered face.

Smoke once again started filling the air, but it was coming from a completely different place. No, not a single place. More like four different places. The places not covered in smoke were ablaze with fire, and in the middle of the chaos no one realized that smoke was also pouring out of the hospital's windows.

Inside, things had happened as if in a different dimension. The two doctors tending to the wounded woman inspected her head in search of the injury responsible for so much bleeding, but they found nothing. Thinking that maybe one of the kids was the one that was hurt, they brought both boys to another two beds and examined them.

Behind those curtains that gave patients privacy, no one could know what was happening. With the ER packed as it was, no doctor could comfortably move around or talk to one another, and so information started getting lost. Screams of warning were mistaken for yells of panic and so more and more people tried to get inside the hospital when there was no space left for anyone.

"Do you feel pain anywhere?" The doctor asked the boy with blood all over his face but the teen ignored him. He was looking around as if wondering if someone would jump on top of them at any given second.

"This is a villain hospital, right?" The kid asked, his low voice barely audible over the chaos just feet away from them.

The doctor, assuming that the boy was scared, reassured the teen with a smile.

"Yes. But they're all kept in the west wing behind surveillance. Not even these villains can get them out."

"West wing, huh?" The boy murmured. Before the doctor could get back to looking for a head injury, he was called over to assist the rest of the staff in trying to stop the barrage of people coming into the hospital. He left the kid, confident that whatever wound had caused the bleeding wasn't serious.

There was practically nothing to be done, as the fire outside was getting closer and closer and the people outside wanted refuge from the fight taking place. Screams and yells grew into a crescendo that made it impossible to communicate even with the person right next to you.

After a few minutes of panic, the noise started going down. It was gradual and obvious, but no one seemed to notice that the noise was leaving.

The doctor tried to get back to his patient, but he swayed to the side and fell just short of reaching his destination. Behind him, other people started collapsing one after the other, the air growing thick with the same toxic mist that had been seen outside the hospital just minutes prior.

The second doctor, the one checking in on the injured woman, was also unconscious, though his body was located by the wall, encased in ice.

From behind the curtains stepped out Shoto, Izuku and Toga, all of them sporting their own gas masks.

Izuku got rid of the backpack he'd been carrying, now empty. It had only served to pack four gas masks and a pair of clothes for Toga, who had been forced to use her quirk while naked to be able to produce clothes to her copy, which was much taller and broader than her original form.

"He said they were in the west wing." Shoto informed behind his mask as they walked past the Mustard clone that had made its way inside with the rest of the masses. The younger boy was sporting his own gas mask, and he gave the other three an exasperated look when they approached.

"Let's just go get him. We can't be here all day." The kid hissed, and his three elders nodded. They ran down hallways, carrying the smoke cloud along with them as if they were spreading the plague.

People around them, both guards and doctors, fell once they inhaled the smoke. They left a trail of bodies as they went, Izuku struggling to read the signs that would direct them to the records they needed to find Stain.

His skin was tingling with excitement at the prospect of seeing his mentor once again, but he refused to celebrate prematurely. He wouldn't even as much as crack a smile until Stain was by his side back at the bar.

Once in the main office, it was just a matter of them finding the records that would tell them where each villain was in the west wing. They didn't have the time to just search every room, not with more and more pro heroes arriving on the scene by the second.

They were met with an unnecessary amount of files, all of them packed in the silver drawers of silver cabinets. With no other option and absolutely no time to lose, they set to looking. They fortunately knew Stain's real name, which should make finding his file much simpler.

"Hawks is here." Dabi informed them through their earpieces, and Izuku rushed to get through endless files. Toga, now in her normal clothes, was right next to him checking another drawer, but Shoto was the one that actually found what they were looking for.

"Room 348," He said, and Izuku was darting out of the room just as soon as he heard that. They had to go up two floors to get Stain but they were so close now. They were almost there, Izuku told himself with his heart pounding in his chest.

The alarm of the hospital was activated then, and the air around them illuminated red on and off. The scene looked straight from a horror movie, with all four of them running in the middle of the smoke and with the deafening alarm echoing in the hospital.

Behind them, Shoto used his ice quirk to block the hallways they passed. It was only a matter of time before they were followed and the ice constructs could win them precious seconds.

Izuku ran up the stairs, taking the steps two at a time in his hurry. His nightmare was suddenly very fresh in his mind and he had to fight the sinking feeling in his stomach. That had just been a dream. The plan was going well, he thought as they passed the second floor and headed for the next.

Izuku's face was sweating behind his mask. He was right there. He landed on the last step and used all his strength to push himself forward, more than ready to find room 348 and finally put an end to the hellish nightmare that the past few days had been.

Well, perhaps not a nightmare, Izuku thought, hearing the steps of Toga and Shoto behind him. He'd met some people that he believed Stain might accept, and he was anxious for all of them to meet. Maybe getting Stain to like them wouldn't be so hard, Izuku wondered as he rounded a corner. Maybe things wouldn't be so bad. Maybe he wo-

A gunshot rang out, its sound unbearably loud as it echoed in the cramped hallway. Izuku flinched violently, taking his hands to his chest to see if he was bleeding. But there was no wound on him. He turned to see his companions, afraid for their safety, but Toga and Shoto were on the ground just like him, Shoto's arm around Toga. They looked at Izuku in shock, clearly surprised.

Izuku looked up, his eyes landing on the clone of Mustard. He was standing straight, his arm outstretched and a gun held firmly in his hand. He was facing towards the back of the hall they just passed, and not even ten feet from him there was a figure on the ground.

Izuku felt the floor disappearing beneath him.

The white outfit told Izuku that the person on the ground was a nurse, the open door next to her pointing to the fact that she'd been running away from them. And Mustard had just shot her in the back.

The youngest boy turned towards them, the gun looking awfully big in the boy's hand. He tilted his head when he saw his teammates on the ground.

"It was just a shot, you cowards." The boy snapped, unaware of the shock on Izuku's face.

Shoto was quick. Without moving a muscle, a wall of ice shot forward and hit the clone straight on the chest, Mustard's small form crashing violently against the wall and melting into a puddle of mud before he could say another word. The gas quickly dissipated and the air around them cleared.

The nurse was still down, there was blood pooling under her and she wasn't moving.

Izuku felt like he couldn't breathe anymore. The plan had just failed.